Have you ever discovered two versions of the same Microsoft Word document on your disk, or one version on your desktop and another on your notebook, and not known what the difference was between the two files?

Or maybe you've sent someone a file to work on with the Track Changes feature enabled, so you'd be able to spot any changes easily. When you got the file back, have you ever found that your collaborator had turned Track Changes off?

If you answered yes to either of these questions, you'll appreciate the value of being able to compare two versions of a file. The good news is that Word has a built-in Compare command. Unfortunately, it's not immediately obvious how best to use the command, or even where it is. And before you use it, you'll want to understand just what Word's doing when it compares files and merges them.

As recently as Word 2000, Word's Compare command was easy to find. You'd choose Tools | Track Changes | Compare documents, pick a file to compare to the currently open document, and Word would add the missing results to the current document.

The Compare feature assumed that the current document was newer. Anything in it that wasn't also in the file you were comparing it to would be marked as added text, just as if you had added it with Track Changes on. Anything from the old file that wasn't in the current document would be inserted, but marked as deleted text. If you were comparing heavily formatted documents with multiple columns and the like, Word would sometimes have trouble matching up the text, and would mark large blocks of unchanged text as new or deleted. But for comparing lightly formatted documents, the feature was extremely useful.

In Word 2002 and Word 2003, the Track Changes submenuand the Compare commanddisappeared. Now you use Tools | Compare and Merge Documents which, though similar to the old Compare command, is potentially confusing, especially if you go with the default merge.

To merge documents, choose Tools | Compare and Merge, pick a file to merge with the currently open file, and choose the Merge button. By default, Word will open the second file and add the changes from the currently open file to the second file. If you prefer, however, you can click on the arrow to the right of the Merge button and choose to merge the changes of the second file into the current document, or merge both documents into a new one. Merging documents is easiest when the two versions were both edited with Track Changes on, but it can be confusing even then. Merged documents are on an equal footing. Anything marked as deleted in either version will be marked as deleted in the merged version, and any text added to either will be marked inserted. You'll then have to sort through the changes and decide which to keep and which to reject, but at least you'll know that the deletions were actually deleted by someone, and the additions were actually added.

If the documents weren't edited with Track Changes on, merging is messier. Every time Word finds text in one version that's not in the other, the program will guess whether the text was added from the one document or deleted from the other. It's often wrong, however; some of the text marked as inserted may have actually been deleted from one of the files, and some of the text marked deleted may have been inserted. For any of the marked text in this scenario, the only thing you can be sure of is that there is a difference between the files. This simply isn't helpful if you're trying to discern the specific differences between two versions of a file.

Fortunately, there is another way to compare documents. One of the check-box options to the left of the Merge button is Legal Blackline. It's not checked by default, but if you add a check to the box, the Merge button turns into a Compare button. Choose the Compare button, and Word will compare the files rather than merge them.

As in earlier Word versions, the Compare feature treats the currently open file as newer. Any text that's only in the open version will be marked as inserted, and text that's only in the file you're comparing to will be marked as deleted. Unlike in earlier Word versions, the results of the comparison in Word 2002 and Word 2003 will show up in a newly created document, so the originals remain untouched. Note that the Compare feature does not handle tracked changes well. If you try to compare files with tracked changes, Word will tell you that it is going to treat all tracked changes as already accepted. The better approach is to go through the files yourself and accept or reject each change. Given how confusing merged files can be, even if you know that both files were edited strictly with Track Changes on, you might want to take this approach, then compare the files instead of merging them.

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About the Author

M. David Stone is an award-winning freelance writer and computer industry consultant. Although a confirmed generalist, with writing credits on subjects as varied as ape language experiments, politics, quantum physics, and an overview of a top company in the gaming industry. David is also an expert in imaging technologies (including printers, moni... See Full Bio

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